The making of a dissident movement

The alliance between the angry young men of Northern Ireland’s worst estates and older, experienced republicans has led to the recent growth in dissident republican activity

A YOUNG MAN in a hoodie leers at the greying figure scolding his bad behaviour. The youth’s defiant stance trumpets his dismissal of the old-timer. So what if he is told he looks ridiculous, his face wrapped in a scarf to conceal his identity; so what if he is accused of being a disgrace to the community? He has neither time nor respect for his elders and is happy to flaunt his contempt: a clenched fist and a shout of “yeehaw” delivered right into the older man’s face.

The exchange could have happened in any deprived district of Britain or Ireland. An irreverent disdain for authority and a readiness to engage in antisocial activity are scarcely unusual. Yet this particular incident was loaded with symbolic meaning.

It was north Belfast, July of this year. The young man was fresh from a bout of rioting against Orange Order parades through the Ardoyne area of the city. His interlocutor was Bobby Storey, the chairman of Belfast Sinn Fein – and in a former life, one of the best known IRA volunteers during the Troubles. Storey had been sent to try and quell the unrest, as had his Sinn Fein colleague (another former IRA member), Gerry Kelly. Both were given short shrift by those engaged in the disturbances. Taken aback, Storey mocked the incoherence of that particular teenager – “Yeehaw: that’s some answer” – only to be met with a defiant: “What’s your f***ing answer?”

Until a couple of years ago this episode would have been unthinkable. The Provisional Irish republican movement used to dominate the working-class nationalist districts of Northern Ireland. Through a mixture of coercion and consent, intimidation and influence, the hegemony of Sinn Féin and the Provisional IRA was, in many areas, near absolute.

Times have changed. Two senior former Provisional IRA figures from east Tyrone, Brian Arthurs (45) and Peter McCaughey (40), publicly criticised Sinn Féin in a recent interview with a national newspaper. Arthurs, in particular, denounced the party’s decision to support the Police Service of Northern Ireland.

Each of these episodes reflects the fact Sinn Féin is under increasing pressure in what were once its heartland communities – and helps explain why recent years have seen a steady rise in the activities of dissident republicans, both violent and non-violent.

The threat posed by dissident republicans prepared to use violence to achieve their aims is widely recognised to be higher than at any time since the Belfast Agreement, in 1998. Whether it be the British home secretary, the director-general of MI5, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland or the Minister for Justice in the Republic, wherever you turn the assessment is consistently bleak.

Why is this the case? One reason is the coming together, in dissident republican circles, of two generations, which has helped produce a potentially deadly mix.

On the one hand there are the disillusioned teenagers, many of them from sink estates in places like Belfast, Lurgan and Derry, whose lives are blighted by deprivation. Alienated from mainstream society, and with few job prospects, they feel no connection at all with the political classes that govern them.

Such underprivileged youngsters are scarcely unique to Northern Ireland. Yet alongside these foot soldiers stands an older generation of disaffected republicans, fortysomethings who are ready and able to offer a compelling narrative that explains the problems of their lives: partition and the iniquities of the “British presence” in Ireland.

They offer an equally straightforward remedy: Irish unity and the path of the Republic. It is the cause to which members of this older generation have dedicated their adult lives. They wish now to pass it on to their descendants.

The convergence of these two groups has fuelled the growth in dissident republican activity: the angry young men of Northern Ireland’s worst estates allied with older republicans, some of whom have expertise when it comes to carrying out acts of terrorism.

It is the latter who in many respects are the real problem. As individuals they were never fully reconciled to the peace process but were prepared to give it a go in the hope that it might deliver on republican objectives. For a time the process was felt to have enough momentum plausibly to be seen as advancing the cause. Since 2006-7, however, optimism has been replaced by disillusion.

The failure of Sinn Féin to build politically in the south was especially significant, leaving the party “partitioned” and locked in an unhappy marriage with the DUP in the North. And the price paid to achieve this? The winding-up of the Provisional IRA, weapons decommissioning and Sinn Féin’s acceptance of policing. To a growing number of republicans it was a deeply unsatisfactory result. Increasing numbers walked away from the Provisional movement, some for a life beyond the “struggle” but others for the various dissident organisations. These were people who had invested enough in violence by the time of the ceasefires of the 1990s that they were always unlikely to accept or be able to lead normal lives. Many now wish to go back to “doing what they do best”.

It is this process that explains why Britain’s new national security strategy placed the threat from “residual terrorist groups linked to Northern Ireland” beside that posed by international jihadist terrorism.

Northern Ireland is not about to return to the darkest days of the Troubles, but neither has it seen an end to violence. The lifeblood of physical-force republicanism has survived the demise of the Provisional IRA and been decanted into new vessels.

Though weaker than previously, it does not appear set to expire any time soon.

Dr Martyn Frampton is a lecturer in modern history at Queen Mary, University of London. His book, Legion of the Rearguard: Dissident Irish Republicanism, is published by Irish Academic Press, €22.50